10 Commandments Intro

All right, remain standing for the reading of the Word. If you want to turn with me to Exodus 20, we'll read 17 verses. And whether you want to turn with me or not, I suggest you do. I'm going to ask everyone to memorize this section of Scripture over the next several months. This is not a lot of verses, and it's not hard to remember, and it may be some of the most important parts of scripture to remember.

So, Exodus 20, 1-17, And God spoke all these words, saying, I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that Yahweh is giving you you shall not murder you shall not commit adultery you shall not steal you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor you shall not covet your neighbor's house you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's you may be seated may God bless the reading of his word and we'll ask his blessing upon the preaching of it right now Father in heaven we confess to you that your word is our hope It is our infallible rule of faith and life.

And we ask that you would anoint me with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, that I may preach with unction today, that the people may hear your word, that they may have understanding of these things that are so misunderstood in even the church today. And I ask you to open all of our eyes to behold wondrous things out of your law. Amen. The series that we're about to begin, I've titled the Ten Commandments.

I was going to call it God's Law, but God's Law in some sense contains more than that because we have the ceremonial law and the judicial laws. And in particular, what I want to talk about for the next several months, maybe almost six months, which will give you plenty of time to memorize 17 verses of Scripture that I think I may read to you every Sunday anyway. But what I want to talk about is the Ten Commandments, and I want to be able to explain this is what we believe the Bible tells us about the Ten Commandments.

This is going to be from the perspective of a 1689 Baptist. You will not get teaching like this at a dispensational church like even the great John MacArthur, who is a wonderful preacher and a great man of God. You will not hear the things that I am going to tell you from the Scripture about God's law from him. there are other reformed people such as Ligonier Ministries where R.C.

Sproul was and Presbyterian types that will have some concepts of what I'm saying and they will apply them differently and think of them differently and so what you are going to hear today and for the next several months it may be the very first time you've heard something like this in fact it will be the first time I've heard preaching on this topic in a church. So I am hoping, it may sound odd, I am hoping the Lord blesses me as well through the preaching of his word to you. There are several theories about the Ten Commandments.

One of them, what I'll call the dispensational approach in general. There's also new covenant theologians who would consider themselves to be reformed in a sense and adhere to covenant theology of some kind. That theory is that the Ten Commandments pretty much were a set of laws given to the nation of Israel or the people of Israel and that those Ten Commandments no longer have an abiding influence in the life of believers in the life of the church because the nation of Israel is now not who God is dealing with in that same sense he was then.

They are effectively and I'm going to say, I'm going to qualify this, faithful people will hold these views that I'm going to disagree with. And they are good men and thank the Lord because his law is actually written on their heart, they still live a righteous life, many of them, and actually obey God's law maybe better than we do at times But the idea is that because these ceremonial laws are gone and because we don have judicial laws anymore for the nation of Israel that the whole law has been somehow done away with I might use the word abolished. Turn to Matthew chapter 5.

We're going to do a lot of jumping around. We're not going to exegete Exodus 20 today. We will look at each of those commandments in its context. we will look at Jesus' exposition of Exodus 20, Matthew 5 largely. In Matthew 5, Jesus, who is the inaugurator of the new covenant, he's the one who was resurrected, which actually ratifies the whole thing, is legitimate and is now what we live under.

Jesus says in verse 17 of chapter 5, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets, I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them you cannot read this verse and walk away thinking well I guess Jesus has done away with the commandments because he fulfilled them Jesus specifically addresses the false teaching that when he came he came to do away with the commandments now some might argue well Jesus is talking about the ceremonial law here he came to fulfill the ceremonial law that always pointed to him. And when he fulfilled the ceremonial law, there was no longer any need for it. And the law is one unit, according to some people's view of the law.

And so the law is gone. We believe in a tripartite division of the law here, which means there's three types of law in God's big category that we can call the law. There's the moral law, which is basically summed up in the Ten Commandments, even the two commandments Jesus will teach us in Matthew 22. There's the judicial laws, which means those are for judging people.

That's how a government is supposed to run, with judicial laws. And that's how Israel's government was run, was through those specific judicial laws. And then there's the ceremonial laws. The priest had to go into the room, he had to wash his hands and do all the different things, and he had to slaughter the lamb, and he had to pray over the goat that he sent into the wilderness, and they had to do all the sacrifices, and there was the ceremonial laws that the priests would go through in order to make the sacrifices that were pointing to Christ coming.

But when we talk about the law that Jesus did not come to abolish, keep reading in Matthew 5, Jesus says, Truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven and he says for truly i tell you unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven and so up to this point you could still make an argument that jesus says he's not gonna abolish or fulfill the ceremonial law, but once the ceremonial law was fulfilled it might go away. You could say, well maybe he's still talking about ceremonial law, but keep reading. Jesus in verses 21 to 28 then talks about murder.

Specifically the sixth commandment of God's moral law, the ten commandments. After that he talks about the seventh commandment, lust, sexual morality, and marriage. he then talks about oaths the ninth commandment during false witness against your neighbor throughout the entire sermon that Jesus gives in this section he is digging deeper from the letter of the law into the spirit of the law and actually exposing that it's our covetous hearts the tenth commandment that is the beginning of us violating these other commandments and so the argument that Jesus came to fulfill the ceremonial law in Matthew 5 doesn't hold any water the reason why God's law abides is because it comes from God's character the so I want to explain one more thing I started to say and then we'll go to this the spirit and the letter of the law. We're going to have to review this multiple times maybe.

But when somebody gives a law, that law has a spirit and a letter is the way this is described. So when you're told you shall not murder, we know exactly what those words mean. We don't take somebody else's life unlawfully. There is lawful ways to take lives. For example, the death penalty and a just war. but the spirit of that law goes deeper than the letter of that law because as jesus says in matthew 5 21 you have heard that it was said to those of old you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment so jesus brings up the commandment you all know this commandment the sixth commandment don't murder and there's a whole bunch of people walking around who are literally not taking anyone's life and thinking they're righteous they're obeying the commandment therefore God will be pleased with them on the day of judgment and Jesus says but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council and whoever just calls his brother a fool mockingly Jesus doesn't say that but we understand that that's what he's talking about will be liable to the hell of fire you certainly this is an interesting question it takes a little bit of hermeneutical work to figure this out but if you couldn't call someone a fool you could hardly read the book of Proverbs and interpret it for people so what Jesus is talking about is people who are mocking each other hating each other in their heart but then they walk away and they feel righteous because, well, I never technically broke the commandment.

And Jesus is letting everyone of these Pharisees and scribes know who he just said don't have the righteousness to make it to heaven. he's letting every one of them know that it is the sin in your heart that's going to condemn you if you still obey the letter of the law. And so we have to understand when we look at the Ten Commandments when we try to understand what they're saying that there's more to it than just what appears to be on the surface to us. at the same time we need to understand that there is a letter of the law there is a actual law to follow that can be measured and so you cannot do what some people do okay so i have heard people say this all right i i really need my son to sit down though and stop distracting people and if i have to do that from up here it's very embarrassing for all of us i hoping it'll never happen again. Thank you.

When I've heard people say that they can commit what I'll call sexual immorality, but they can fornicate, but they don't lust in their heart. So they take Jesus' words about lust being coming from the heart, and they say, well, as long as I'm not lusting in my heart, I'm not actually sinning. Now, we know that they're actually wrong, and they're technically lying, but they may be lying to themselves so much, they're so deceived by their own lust, that they have convinced themselves that they're not actually doing any sin in their heart.

And we should be able to say to a person like that, well, whether you recognize the sin in your heart or not, your outward actions are clearly wicked. And maybe we don't have to be so strong to call it wicked, we could, but we can just say it clearly violates what this law says. unintentionally even violating God's law is a violation of God's law if you're speeding and you didn't mean to they can give you a ticket so turn two well let's start I'm a little scattered this is a rough week So, turn to the page I gave you with all the verses on it, if anyone has that. I just did a quick search of the word law in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament.

And so I want to start with the idea that God's law has always been there and it's always been a wonderful thing. Okay, so we're just introducing the Ten Commandments right now. and we're trying to wet our appetites for actually investigating each one of them. And what I want you to understand, so if I just started today and said, okay, here's the first commandment, here's what you do.

I can make Pharisees out of the whole room. I can just do 10 weeks, here's what you do, and now you're obeying the commandments. That'd be easy. So I can do 20 weeks and I can go to the heart and I can say, well, here's what this commandment really means, and here's how your heart should be consecrated to God, and then here's also some outward actions that will help you to investigate your own heart.

That wouldn't have been too bad either. But what I want you to understand is that the law is actually still abiding on your life, whether you're a Christian or not. Unless the Christians think they got away with something here, that you're somehow free from it, the confession actually states you're more obligated to it because of the gospel. You're just not going to be cursed by it and judged by it.

Psalm 1 verse 2 well it is about Jesus but David says the blessed man who's not doing the wicked things his delight is in the law of Yahweh you cannot read Psalm 1 verses 1 and 2 and walk away and tell me well this is just referring to the ceremonial law okay this is God's moral law you don't walk in the counsel of the wicked by walking in God's law. Psalm 19, 7. The law of Yahweh is perfect, reviving the soul.

God's law is perfect. This is more specifically about His word, but I left it there because we translate it with the word law. Psalm 37. The law of God is in His heart. His steps do not slip. A little interpretive key to the Bible.

We don't have the whole context here. You should read the whole context. This certainly isn't about a wicked man, But let me tell you this. I don't have to read the whole verse. I don't have to read all of Psalm 37 to know. Psalm 37 is written about Jesus Christ our Lord.

And this verse, the law of God is in his heart, is telling us what kind of man he was. And if he's your example, then why wouldn't you want God's law in your heart? The feet of the wicked are the ones that slip. That was the verse Jonathan Edwards used to preach his famous sermon about sinners in the hands of an angry God. Your steps won't slip. Not because you're so strong.

Not because you've got great shoes. Not because you've got good balance. Your steps aren't going to slip because God's law is in your heart. And because God's law is in your heart, you know He loves you. Psalm 40, I delight to do your will, O my God, your law is within my heart. Psalm 119 has about 20 verses out of the 176 in there that mention God's law verse 70 if you skip down their heart is on feeling like fat but I delight in your law Psalm 142 your righteousness is righteous forever and your law is true Psalm 119 174 I long for your salvation O Yahweh and your law is my delight And just skip to the bottom, Proverbs 29, 18.

Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. But blessed is he who keeps the law. So there's kind of a dual thing. going on here, one thing you need to understand is that keeping God's law is not going to save you. That was the error of the Pharisees. And when you think that you're going to keep God's law to achieve your own version of righteousness so that you can be saved by your law keeping, what you will inevitably do is you will reduce the standards of the law to wherever you happen to be.

That's why you end up with the whole spirit of the law, letter of the law thing that I explained earlier. I remember a story, I'll tell a quick story. There's a lady who, she was told that if she drank, she liked drinking too much and she eventually had to, you know, check herself into some place for what the world calls alcoholism. She's a drunkard by the Bible standard.

But she was trying to figure out, do I have a drinking problem? And somebody said, well, do you drink before your kids go to bed? And she said, no. They said, well, as long as as long as you don't drink before your kids go to bed and you're taking care of your kids it's probably okay so the confession she gave eventually in the story was she was putting her kids to bed at like 6.30pm eventually so she just kept putting them to bed earlier so she was obeying the letter of this law that she had created to tell her she wasn't an alcoholic we will always reduce the standard of God's law to whatever we think we can achieve That's what we will do.

And then Jesus comes in in Matthew 5, and we'll look at this more. He basically says, look, your sin comes from your heart way before any outward action ever happens. You've already violated God's law. And we can't help it. We're sinners. So God, there's some difficult things to talk about when we talk about the Ten Commandments, because there are verses like Galatians 5, verse 16 to 18, that are verses that are challenging on the surface that we have to make sure we understand.

So I'll turn you there. So nobody runs out and says, well, he skipped all the hard verses. Galatians 5, 16 to 18. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

And then he says this, But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. And there's Christians all over this country right now that the moment that you will claim to them that they need to obey something God has said, they will run to this verse. And they'll say, I've been saved by grace through faith and I'm not under law. As if somehow Jesus Christ being bludgeoned and bloodied and broken because of your inability to keep God's law now makes it so that there is no more law whatsoever for you.

As if Jesus kept the law perfectly so that you could just run from it. Turn to Ezekiel 37. Not going to apologize for making you jump around a lot. Ezekiel 36, sorry. Ezekiel 36, verse 27. God describing his new covenant, this is one of the reasons you have to understand covenant theology enough to know about the law.

You have to understand that we are teaching this from a 1689 federalism perspective, a 1689 Baptist perspective, because some people will make this verse mean something else, but God promising to his people that he's going to regenerate them and save them from their sins says, and I will put my spirit within you. Okay, we all agree with that. The Holy Spirit lives in you if you're a Christian, right?

He makes His dwelling place with you. There's no longer some temple that we travel to where He only meets with men there. And then He says what? After He puts His spirit in you, what's He going to do? And cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules. so you cannot tell me that in Ezekiel 36 verse 27 God promises that he is going to cause people to walk in his statutes and be careful to obey his rules but there's no such thing as statutes or rules for the Christian these are just other words for God's law precepts, law, statutes rules these are all generally words that mean the same thing look at Genesis Genesis 2 Genesis 3, sorry so I'm going to make the case that God's law is universal and perpetual and eternal because it actually comes from who God is So because God is not an idolater, we cannot commit idolatry.

Because God is not a blasphemer, we shouldn't blaspheme. Because God's a creator, and he enjoys resting and looking at his creation, we are to Sabbath. Because God understands authority structures perfectly, and if there was an authority, he'd obey it. But there isn't one. We are to obey our authorities. And God has created us to obey our authorities.

God doesn't have an authority but he understands what authority is because he is the authority because God's not a murderer we can't murder keep in mind God taking life isn't the same as murder do you realize God has never killed an innocent life never, never once even Jesus Christ had sin imputed to him so that he could be killed right? Jesus died a guilty man and he became sin and knew no sin because God isn't an adulterer we shouldn't commit adultery which is basically physical idolatry you know God can never steal it's not even so much that he's not a thief He's not. But God can't steal.

He owns everything. Same as the earlier one. He can't be insubordinate. There's no authority over him. God cannot lie. We're told that in the book of Titus.

He cannot lie. It's impossible for him to lie. And God certainly can't covet because there's nothing that God would ever want that's unrighteous. And so in Genesis chapter 3, we see the woman We're going to skip around a little bit. There's a few things going on here. But verse 6, the woman saw that the tree was good for food.

This is the tree she's not supposed to eat from. And that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be to be desired to make one wise. She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. So Eve breaks God's law. God had given her one law at the time. At the time, the only law we understood was don't eat from this one tree, right?

Okay, here's a whole bunch of trees that God created for you that you can eat from. They had to be amazing. I mean, if anyone here has ever just had a fresh piece of fruit, and you're like, oh wow, this is so good. Imagine the fruit before there was any genetic defects that had ever been introduced into anything. Just amazing. But Eve broke that rule.

But before Eve broke that rule, she desired something that God had given her. She coveted. She coveted some knowledge that the serpent convinced her that God had, that he was withholding from her. Eve began her sin by coveting. She violated the 10th commandment before she knew there was one. Look ahead to Cain and Abel in chapter 4.

Verse 8, Cain spoke to Abel his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Verse 10, the Lord said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

Well, was the Ten Commandments given before or after this? Kids, what happened first? Did Cain kill Abel first, or did God give the Ten Commandments first? Yeah, Cain killed Abel. Turn to 1 John 3. What did God call it?

Look at 1 John 3. In 1 John 3, verse 12, John but the Holy Spirit writes we should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother well there was no law against murder was there if the Ten Commandments listen this is the whole point I'm trying to get to there's a lot here all these scriptures we could exegete all sorts of neat things out of them the point is this if the Ten Commandments was the beginning of God's moral law, then how could Cain have murdered somebody long before the Ten Commandments were given? And just like the Ten Commandments weren't invented on Sinai when God etched them into stone, by the way, we should recognize that there was one section of God's Word that He etched in stone.

It was His law. Maybe that's instructive in and of itself. but just like the Ten Commandments didn't spring into being and all of a sudden become effective when God gave them to Moses people were always held accountable to those things before they were given specifically those same Ten Commandments didn't suddenly go away just because Jesus fulfilled them and then died for our sake in Romans 2 we are reminded of this truth in Romans 2 verse 14 for when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law verse 15 they show what they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. I'm going to tell you what, there is no way whatsoever that the law written on the hearts of Gentiles around the world was God ceremonial law And there no way it was the judicial laws that applied to Israel This is a reference to the fact that God moral laws imprinted on every single one of us And praise the Lord for it, because when you go almost anywhere in the world for the history of the world, what you have seen in things that we would actually classify as civilizations, is you see one-man, one-woman marriages that produce children so that the people can flourish and continue.

You see people with property rights not stealing each other's stuff. You see rules and laws against murdering someone. And you see consequences for murdering someone. the violation of another man's wife is universally understood to be wicked even cultures that promote it i think know that they're doing something wrong they just they've given themselves over so although we live in a culture that has started to ignore these obvious things that are evident from what we call natural law.

People still know the truth. People still know that you should obey your parents. Pagan parents all over this country are spanking their kids, giving them commands, and the biggest problem is because spanking is in the Bible, they stop spanking, and so what do they do? They just search and search for all these books that will tell them, how can I discipline my kids, but just do it a different way than God said, basically. but they still think they're the authority in the house.

I mean, it's built into them. And when I was a kid, we had respect to every older person you knew. You never called anyone by their first name. It was always Mr. or Mrs. Lindsay obviously grew up that way. She still does it.

She does it with people that I think she shouldn't have to. But it's respect. We were taught that men and women, you respected. And if you were a kid, you kept your mouth shut. You waited until it was your turn to talk. and when you addressed an adult, you said Mr. or Mrs. whatever it was. There's just a respect for authority that's built into our DNA.

It's built into who we are as humans, and we pervert it and we transgress it because we hate God and we love our sin. So in 1 John 3, Okay, so that was the introduction. That was the introduction to this sermon, which is the introduction to the whole series. So it might be a long one. I'm just kidding. I'll warn you if it's ever going to be a long one.

And we'll give people the option of reducing like a song or something. I don't think we'll have to go too long. But in 1 John 3, I want to get our focus on the fact that the law is good for us. And what it's for and why we're going to do it. And that it really does abide for us today. If you're thinking in your mind, we've been freed from the law. we've been freed from the curse of the law anyone who lives by the law has to do all the law if you're thinking about Romans 7 where we're basically told that the law is no longer over us in that sense we will look at some of those things but Adam and Eve broke God's law before it was given Cain broke it before it was given and you know what we still have that same law today because God's morality hasn't changed the problem is that we could not save ourselves by the works of the law and so when jesus came and fulfilled it but did not abolish it as he said we made up the idea that okay well now there's no law which interestingly enough when you find a culture that rejects god's law what you'll notice is that they end up with about a thousand times more laws than god's law has because everyone will keep failing to do things that are right, no one will love their neighbor in any meaningful way, and so we'll have to keep making more and more laws to control how people don't love their neighbor, basically, is what ends up happening.

And even the little Christian sects, S-E-C-T-S, that get together and say there's no more Ten Commandments, that's not what we have to obey, that's legalism, they'll yell. Even those groups will have all sorts of other rules now that they've made up. Or some of them, they just go through the New Testament and they make the law of Christ, all of God's commands in the New Testament, which are more than I can number.

It's a lot easier to remember ten of them. That's why I think you can memorize them. I'm telling you that. But we want to avoid these errors. We want to avoid trying to do things our own way. We want to try to do things God's way.

And we recognize that the first use of God's law was to lead us to Christ. All right, that's from Galatians 3 or 4 or something. I don't remember right now. The end of 3, I think. And what we realize is that the law is a mirror to show you how far short you fall from the righteous standard of God. Okay?

Jesus' sermon, Matthew 5, 48. You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. That's how you get to heaven. It's that simple. Just be perfect. God's law that Jesus just exegeted from chapter 5, verse 17 to 48, shows you that you didn't do it.

The best men who were alive that day, who actually outwardly were blameless according to the law, failed to keep the law in such a way that they would make it to heaven. So how can you? And so the second use of the law, which is somewhat unrelated, this is a reformed thing, is that God's law is given through the control of people's behavior in nations.

We have a whole society of people that are sinners who hate authority, but you know what? Most of us stop at red lights and go at green lights and thank God. And God's law about not murdering in general when it is obeyed although we getting to a point where I don even know if 50 of people live now with abortion being so common But so a lot of these laws we have in the land, and they protect people from evildoers.

There is recourse when the government, as Jeremy read earlier, decides, hey, this guy is a problem, and the government doesn't always handle it maybe the best way they could, but sometimes they just try to get the guy away from polite society. And that's the second use of the law. God's law helps restrain evil in that way. The reason you're sitting here today and you're alive and breathing is because there's a law somewhere that kept somebody from already doing you in.

Okay? That's how we are. But then the third use of the law, the one that nobody likes, is that the law teaches us how to live. as Christians who are not under the law by way of a curse, as Christians who are not seeking our righteous standing before God by the works of the law, we have God's law to instruct us, hey, here's what's right and wrong. You've been given a heart that loves righteousness and hates evil.

You hunger and thirst for righteousness and you will be satisfied. You've been given a heart that loves what God loves and hates what God hates, and yet you don't know what those things are until you read them. Some of them will come a little bit naturally but some of them you have to read. Some of it you have to dig in and you have to understand what does it mean to covet?

What does it mean to obey the Sabbath? Because that's the one everyone hates the most. I don't know why. That's like the best one. Like, hey, quit working. You live in a cursed world where your work is totally cursed.

And even non-believers hate it. And here, you know what? Here's a day off. And some Christians came along and said, well, let's get rid of that commandment and we'll kind of keep the rest of them. Like, what? Who is the ad wizard that came up with that?

So many commandments you could get rid of that would probably be more pleasing, I guess. But that's the one they hate. And you know what? That's the one that brings you here on Sunday. That's the one that gets you gathering with the church, sitting under preaching, hearing the word of God, being prayed over and fellowshipping with other Christians. And as soon as they separated us from each other on Sundays, then they could divide and conquer.

And now they can start to feed us all sorts of trash. Because most Christians are spending the afternoon. Well, it's the summer still. But in a few weeks, most Christians will spend Sunday afternoon from about 12.15 to about midnight sitting in front of a TV just watching football. That's what most people in the United States do at least. And they will simply watch over and over advertisements with scantily clad women that will tempt their flesh in that sense.

They will watch beer commercials. And I'm not saying all beer is wrong, but usually these things are sold to try to get people drunk and separated from fellowship with God. and that's the kind of thing that happens so anyway the Sabbath is a good thing for you it's a good thing for us all of God's law is good for us if you followed your own lusts and your own desires your life would be so heinous and honestly unfulfilling and unsatisfying and ultimately it would lead to destruction and eternal death and hell and yet what God has said is hey here's some rules that basically tell you here's how you can have a great life. Here's how you can have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Here's how you can have a satisfying sex life. Because you do it within the context of a marriage. Here's how you can have great joy with your neighbors. Because you treat them right. And you know how to love your neighbor in a way that may actually persuade someone and win them over even if they don't like you or agree with you about things. Here's how to work.

And not steal things. It's like a formula for making money. Like, who doesn't like making money? I'm not saying it's automatic that you're going to be rich. I know there's poor people that are Christians. It's tough times.

Things happen. But for the most part, doing what God says is only good. It only works out for good, I mean, practically. It's always good. So in 1 John 3, we're reminded that we're children of God. He says, see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God.

This is super exciting. and I'm on a sermon series about the Ten Commandments so we're not going to get into that. But if we want to talk about adoption, I'll talk about it all day. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. That we should be called children of God. He says, and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.

Beloved, we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is. So we'll be fully known even as, or we'll fully know even as we've been fully known. But now here you go. Verse 3.

Because the beginning sounds great. Like we're adopted. We're going to be like Jesus. We're going to go with God. And everyone who thus pokes in him purifies himself as he is pure. How are you going to purify yourself if you don't even know the standard?

Again, I'm not talking about saving yourself. I'm not talking about you becoming perfect because you work so hard to do all the right things that God will like you. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that God has already adopted you even though you were dirty and stinky. If there was an orphanage of sinners, you were the last one that anybody would have picked.

Your hair was unwashed. You had some kind of weird disease that was going to get everyone around you sick if they touched you. You'd already been passed over by hundreds of other parents. And now people wanted a younger, cuter kid that didn't have so much baggage and damage. And God came along and said he mine Then he said here the rules that you should follow so that you can have basically a wonderful life and get to know me better and the person that turns to that God basically rejects that we can't call that person the child of God frankly but if you hope in God if you hope that you've been adopted by God you're going to keep yourself pure It's going to be your desire.

I can't even, like there's so many analogies to this. Like a guy on the street begging for food, begging for money, maybe so he can get a drink, maybe so he can sleep with a prostitute and get more diseases or whatever. And somebody comes along and brings him into a castle and says, hey, you know what, I'm a king, I'm going to adopt you, you're a prince now.

Can you imagine a guy waking up every morning and going back outside to the same street and doing the same stuff? Like, bro, you have like Eggs Benedict on the table, like before you get there, right? If I was a prince, there'd be Eggs Benedict every day, okay? And it would never make you gain weight because of the muffin. I can't eat the muffin, but whatever.

You know what I mean? And you imagine a guy that says, no, you know what? I'm going to jump in that dumpster. I'm going to see if somebody left a little bit of a chicken wing like I was eating last week so I can get a little meat. No reasonable person would do that. And yet we do it with God.

When we abandon God's ways to do the things that are the lusts of our flesh, we do exactly what Eve did and we say, we think we know more. We think there's something God's hiding from us that will make us happier than what God's already given us. We reveal ourselves to be coveters. We reveal ourselves to be thieves. We reveal ourselves to be deceived liars. and we reveal ourselves to not have God first in our life.

We don't really believe that He delivered us out of the house of bondage and out of the house of slavery and into something new and we should love Him and adore Him and have no other gods before Him. We reveal that we have any other God that we can have except Him. Okay, well, so you've got to be pure. How do you be pure? Verse 4, 1 John 3, 4. everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness sin is lawlessness well wait a second if the law is gone how can we have something called lawlessness i mean just just playing with the words for a minute the word lawlessness would be the absence of the law and i'm not trying to say a whole bunch of good christian guys that i know are not Christian.

But I'll tell you what, the person that says God's law is no longer in effect, that's lawlessness. They're committing an error, a grave error that I think maybe in their case, because God's law is written strongly on their heart and the spirit is strong, they still end up obeying it almost by accident. But they're leading people to a path of destruction.

Listen, we live in this horrible country. Okay, let's face it. We just finished a crazy lockdown that nobody thought was even possible. Well, there's probably some people, and we probably ignored those people when they warned us, but we just had this crazy lockdown over nothing. We have government control like crazy. We have the White House being lit up with a rainbow flag for Gay Pride Month, and what's worse is that we're so focused on the gay part, we forget the pride part.

We should be rebuking both. We have to go to a clinic on a regular basis so that we can try to tell people, don't murder your helpless, innocent child. This is the world we live in. And if you think the problem with the world is that we've been too focused on God's Ten Commandments, I think you're misunderstanding what's going on around you. So Jesus Christ appeared in order to take away sins and in Him there's no sin.

If Jesus Christ came to take away sins, and those who sin are practicing lawlessness, then the opposite of lawlessness would be obeying the law. Jesus Christ came to take away our disobedience to the law, and I think in practical terms he wants us to obey it while we're still here. Little children. Now he's talking to the children, to us. We're the children. it's John's way of saying hey I'm an old man listen to me let no one deceive you he says no one that means even a pastor even a guy with a big internet following even a guy with a huge church don't let them deceive you whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous how do you know what righteousness is if you don't know the law like how would I know I have to know what it is God's moral commands the ten commandments help me understand it and if I want to throw one of them out I'm not practicing righteousness because I have to keep the whole law or I've broken it so then he says whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil now it gets pretty serious for the devil's been sinning from the beginning sin is transgression of the law it's violating God's law the devil has been violating God's law from the beginning whoever makes a practice of doing this is of the devil and the reason Jesus Christ appeared was to destroy the works of the devil I don't know how you can get out of this well but so we don't have to obey the ten commandments right but then you end up trying to obey them through some other way anyway because we all kind of know what's right and wrong.

Thank the Lord for that. By this it's evident who are the children of God. So remember we started with, see what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And He says, this is how we know who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not Practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

If you don't practice righteousness, you're not of God. It's basically saying if you don't obey God's law, you're not of God. Like if you make a habit of violating God's commands that have been made utterly clear, we have no reason to believe you're a child of God. If you wake up in the morning and you jump in the dumpster on the other side of the moat that's around your castle and you eat chicken wings out of the dumpster, we have no reason to believe you're actually God's son and the prince in the castle.

It's that simple. And then that led into the discussion of Cain murdering his brother. And so I want you to understand that God's law, although weak to save you, although powerful to actually incite your sin in you, God's law is good and pure. We'll see in Romans 7, the commandment is holy. God's law is holy and pure. It's beautiful.

The problem is not with the Ten Commandments. The problem is that the Ten Commandments were never designed to make you holy. The Ten Commandments were never designed for you to earn righteousness or to prove your inherent righteousness. the Ten Commandments are designed so that you may recognize how far from God's standard you really are and that you may recognize how difficult it is to keep them because we all tried and even as Christians we try and fail and that you may see the sweetness of the Savior who kept them perfectly I can't be up 30 minutes past my bedtime without being irritable with the people I say I love the most, okay?

Jesus Christ would go sleepless nights sometimes healing people and being non-stop bombarded by demoniacs and ungrateful people that just wanted whatever he was giving out that day and then he never once had even an irritable cell in his body for a moment. He never once stopped loving God with his whole heart, soul, mind, and strength the entire time. Try skipping a meal once in a while and see how hard it is for you to focus on just praising the Lord and things like that.

We're so weak and he's so strong and so what the command is is not obey the ten commandments the command is come to Jesus Christ who obeyed him for you the command is recognize that when he died he paid the penalty for all of your lawless deeds and I'm not just talking about the times you broke the letter of the law I'm talking about every single moment of your life that you were not loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength Jesus Christ had to suffer for that the wrath of God for even one moment of you not giving him the full devotion he deserves is more than any of us could handle. You'd spend eternity paying for it and never pay it off. Yet Jesus drank it all down.

The cup of God's wrath for people like you and me. And then he rose again on the third day so that you could be justified in the sight of God And if that has happened to you God promised that he would give you a desire to obey his law And this is the testimony of church history. One of the reasons the world hates us is because we so love to do the things God has told us to do in his law, that we expose the works of darkness by our very devotion to certain behaviors.

So I'm not here to scare you into thinking you're not a Christian, but some of you should be thinking very hard about whether or not you really love God's law. And Christians, you should be resting, resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ on your behalf, and committing yourself that you are going to try to let God heal you through his sanctification that he offers. So there's your intro to God's law.

In conclusion, God's law is abiding today for Christians. I think I might have said in conclusion twice, but whatever. Finally, right, Paul did it. if any of you falls out a window after I preach all night then I'm equal with Paul I'm not going to keep you here that long I get hungry too, I'm not going to preach forever but in conclusion, God's law abides today on you you not under it in the sense that you need to fulfill it and you cursed by it but you are living in God world and you have God law to help you It exposes to you the seriousness of your sin.

It tells you about the rewards of doing good. And it helps you to love people and to love God. It doesn't help you by its power. It helps you by the knowledge of it and the Spirit's power in your life. It helps you to be able to love people and love God as you ought and as will be more satisfying to you and them. So let me pray.

Father in heaven, I ask that this word of yours would penetrate the hearts of people and that we may all grow in our knowledge of why you've given your law, that we may all understand it better and that we would hunger and thirst for righteousness and you've promised that you will satisfy those who do that. and so we pray that we would hunger and thirst to understand some of the spirits underneath your law the ideas and the theologies that we need to investigate and understand that we may apply your law properly to our lives and our context and that we would together with the church of all history rejoice and delight in your law please Lord you have promised that your spirit will cause us to walk in your statutes and carefully obey your rules we ask that you would fulfill that promise in us Lord and take away all of the sinful blockers we have meet us today with your means of grace Amen